Hey sweet rockstars, 

I’ll be honest, my last post was my favorite post of all time. I know that sounds like an exaggeration, but I promise it’s not. The last post I wrote was so unapologetically me, and it changed my life to write it, that I hesitated on how to write another one with as much gravitas and “Sandhya-ness” as the last one. I will do my best.

And maybe that is the thing about writing something that feels especially true. It is beautiful, but it is also a little annoying because then you have to keep living after it. You have to write the next sentence. You have to make the next meaning. You have to trust that being deeply yourself once was not a fluke, but a doorway. So, here I am, knocking again.

A few days ago, my mom sent me a Google Gemini-created Instagram video with the caption: “Monsoon but every frame has a story ☔🤌” It’s one of those videos that if you weren’t in a deep reflective headspace (or, let’s be real, if you weren’t me), you’d look at and think: “Aw, this is cute!” and then move on with your life.

But I rarely move on from things, especially cute videos. Let me be clear: I’m not usually an AI-created video fan but there’s just something about this one with the music, the animation, the message… *chefs kiss*

And for those of you who are too lazy to actually watch the video, especially if curiosity doesn’t serve you the way it does me, or for those who don’t have Instagram, I’ll just describe the video to you. 

So the video starts off with a cute girl in a blue dress and yellow raincoat, walking on a telephone wire or some sort of wire, holding a bucket out in the rain and collecting raindrops as they drip off the wire. She’s so tiny against the rain, but she doesn’t even care that the raindrops are as big as her. She is determined, as if she’s been assigned an important mission by the sky itself to gather all the raindrops, maybe for a recipe, maybe for a friend. She just knows that when something beautiful is falling, you should gather up as much as you can.

She is so good at treating the world like it is still offering her a gift. Adults see rain and think: traffic, wet shoes, frizzy hair, inconvenience. She sees rain and thinks: treasure.

I love people like this. I love the people who collect things the world drops by accident, and I love people who find magic in what everyone else rushes past. These are the ones who, whether they know it or not, are constantly saying: there is something here worth saving. That’s bravery – to keep believing the world is generous, even after you have enough evidence that it can be difficult too.

The next frame is a nana sitting by the window looking outside at the rain and drinking chai. Yummmm, chai and monsoons. Add some pakodas and I’m all set. He’s not even doing much – just sitting, looking outside, drinking chai. But if you’ve experienced this moment, you know the spiritual practice of it. Maybe this is his 50th monsoon; maybe he’s thinking of how the water is nurturing his garden, or maybe he’s remembering a younger version of himself on some other rainy day, at some other window, with some other cup of chai.

There is something hopeful about that to me. The idea that life keeps giving us new relationships with the same things. Rain, home, love, work, family, ourselves. What overwhelmed us once may comfort us later. What felt ordinary once may become sacred with enough time. Maybe aging is not just losing things. Maybe it is also gaining more ways to understand the rain.

The next frame is a little boy on a swing attached to a branch with flowers. He’s happily swinging away. Even the colors of the swing are happy colors – pink, yellow, blue, green, and purple. I’m not really sure how the boy made it to the swing but it’s cute nonetheless. There is something about childhood joy that is almost confrontational in how pure it is. Like, excuse me? You’re just going to be happy? In this economy? In the rain? On a flower swing? And yet, yes. He is. His whole job in that frame is to enjoy the moment, and he takes that job seriously.

There is a part of me that thinks adulthood is just learning how to stop interrupting our own happiness. Children do not usually ask, “Do I deserve to be this happy?” They do not think, “Should I be more productive right now?” They just swing. And maybe, every so often, that should be enough for us too.

Now I’m going a little out of order because sometimes the rain isn’t whimsical, sometimes it’s work, maintenance, problem-solving, responsibility. 

There is one frame with a man in a raincoat and rainboots standing on a ladder with a cloth, wiping the inside of the window where the rain is falling. This one makes me laugh because every magical world still needs someone practical. Someone has to wipe the windows. Someone has to notice the leak. Someone has to say, “Okay, yes, the rain is poetic, but the floor is getting wet.”

There is another frame, skipping ahead a few, with a woman standing on a clothesline and using a small fan to dry out the clothes that are hanging to dry. Life does not pause just because the sky is being cinematic. There is an entire essay inside this woman with the fan. The quiet labor. The improvisation. The refusal to be defeated by damp clothes. The way life asks some people not only to witness the rain, but to manage its consequences.

Maybe these two are the ones that everyone calls when something needs fixing. Or maybe (and more likely) they took it upon themselves because they are resourceful, dependable, and take initiative. Maybe they both spend their entire lives being dependable while everyone else romanticizes the storm. For the people in your life like this — romanticize life with them.

Because dependable people deserve, more than most, to be romanticized too. These are the people who ask, “Did you eat?” These are the people who see beauty and also see what needs to be done. They are the ones who are busy making the magic possible, which is its own kind of love. Quiet, practical, unglamorous, deeply necessary love. I think of my parents with this. They’re unfailingly kind, and yet the strongest people I know. Has life and strength burdened them or hindered their kindness? No. It’s made them even better.

Next: a dog hopping in a puddle on a leaf. No notes. Perfect behavior. 

After that, there is a series of cute children:

An adorable little boy in a red jacket and shorts, standing at the edge of a pond, pushing a little paper boat in the water and watching it sail away. This one feels like hope. There is something so tender about paper boats because they are both fragile and brave. They are not built to survive much, and yet the whole point of them is to be sent out anyway. Maybe that little boy spent time folding it carefully. Maybe someone taught him how. Maybe this is his first boat. Maybe he knows it might sink in two seconds, but he still wants to see how far it can go. And isn’t that us? Making small delicate things, sending them into the world, hoping the current is gentle.

A girl in a green lehenga with a yellow umbrella, walking on stones alongside the pond in her garden. This girl is definitely the main character in a romcom, where the entire plot is just this girl walking through her garden after the rain, very aware of the beauty of the world.

She feels like the kind of person who knows how to make an entrance even when no one is watching. And I love that. I love people who carry beauty for themselves. The yellow umbrella, the green lehenga, the careful stepping stones. All of it feels very intentional, not performative or attention-seeking. It’s instead just a little devotion to loveliness. There is something powerful about moving through your own life like it is worth adorning.

A little child in a blue raincoat sliding down a leaf and using both gravity and the raindrops as a catalyst. This child is living every child’s dream, which is to find a slide where adults only see a leaf. The leaf is not a leaf. It is infrastructure. The rain is not rain. It is acceleration. The wetness is not an inconvenience. It is part of the ride.

I want this kind of imagination back. The kind that asks not, “What is this supposed to be?” but “What could this become?” I think adults lose so much joy when we become too loyal to the obvious use of things. A leaf is a leaf. A rainy day is a rainy day. A setback is a setback. But sometimes the thing we think is merely in our way is also trying to become a slide.

And finally, a little auto (or tuktuk) driver driving slowly in the aftermath of the rain to pick up his next customer. This frame feels quieter than the others, but maybe that is why I like it. There is no grand emotional display or obvious whimsy. This last frame feels like the world resuming. It’s just the motion and practical continuation of life after the storm. The road is wet, the world is shining, and still, someone has somewhere to be. Maybe he watched children play, people run for cover, laundry refuse to dry, chai get poured, and then finally the rain softened enough for the day to continue. The rain has passed, or at least softened, and now someone still has to go somewhere. I wonder how long he had been waiting until he got another passenger. There is something comforting about that too. The storm comes. The storm changes the shape of the day. And then, somehow, life resumes. Not always dramatically. Sometimes just one slow ride at a time.

Ask me how many times I watched this video and I’ll easily say 50+ in 5 days. In fact, even as I’m writing this blog post, this Instagram post is on repeat. How can I not? But the reason I keep watching it isn’t just because it’s painfully and aggressively cute. It’s cute in the way that makes me put my phone down, stare at the wall, and reconsider whether I’ve been appreciating the tiny moments enough.

It’s also doing another thing, showing the complexity of the same event from different points of view. The only shared fact, the only common condition in this video, is that everyone is experiencing a monsoon. This video is the tiny animated version of something I think about constantly: people can be inside the same moment and living entirely different stories. We say the “same moment” as if that means the “same experience.”

But it almost never does.

I just finished a really tough case, and most people reading this will know exactly the case I’m talking about. Even in that case, people had vastly different experiences. I tell myself, “This is the hardest case I’ve ever had,” and others say, “I really loved the experience. I would do it again.” Literally, cannot relate, but you have all my respect.

Sometimes we’re all standing in different parts of the same storm. Not every storm has to be enjoyed to be worthwhile. Some storms are simply endured, and endurance is its own quiet miracle.

Similarly, a rainy day can be magical if you are inside and have nowhere to be. Rainy days can be nostalgic if they remind you of childhood, or romantic if you are with someone you love (cue: Tum Hi Ho). But rain can also be a logistical nightmare the way it was for me today. Even though I was only going next door to meet my friend for drinks… those 800 feet drenched me completely. I walked in with hair dripping and soaked from head to toe. He saw me and couldn’t help but laugh. It only took 30 minutes to dry off… and now my hair is suffering the consequences. The rain is the rain: unapologetic and unforgiving. 

And that’s the thing. The same rain I would romanticize from my office window became an enemy the second it attacked my curls. Suddenly, I was not the girl collecting raindrops in a bucket, I was a damp, mildly betrayed woman speed-walking 800 feet and realizing that sometimes the monsoon is less “every frame has a story” and more “every strand of hair has surrendered.”

But even that became a story. That is what I love. Even the inconvenient version becomes something you can laugh about later. Even the drenched walk becomes a tiny memory. Even the moment that felt annoying while it was happening can soften once it is over. Maybe that is one of life’s little mercies: not everything has to feel beautiful in real time to become meaningful in retrospect.

I think this is why I am so drawn to the idea of different people living different stories inside the same event. It gives us permission to stop flattening our lives into one interpretation. A day can be hard and funny. A project can be exhausting and formative. A rainy walk can be objectively unpleasant and still become a little cinematic once you are dry. These are our layered experiences

And maybe going through life is just walking around as entire collections of frames, collecting beauty when we have it, praying for strength when we need it, seeking comfort when we’re down, and elevating those around us when we can. As mom always says: Humans are Complicated – and maybe this is part of the reason we’re so complicated and so lovable. 

We are not only our softest moments or our most productive ones. We are not only the way we handle crises or the way we show up when things are easy. We are all these tiny frames stitched together. Every one of us is a monsoon video with a caption that says: every frame has a story. 

And if every frame has a story, then maybe the kindest thing we can do is stay curious. Look up at the moon and think about its beauty. Look out at the horizon and think about the billions of people in the world we won’t ever get a chance to know, but who still have beautiful and enriched lives. See pictures from our friends’ trips and fall in love.

And speaking of friends’ pictures of trips. My sweet friend Maryanne just went on a trip to Grand Teton, Glacier National Park, and Big Sky. And she did something that I absolutely love doing – she got disposable cameras. And Maryanne so kindly shared these pictures with me and on an otherwise mundane, quiet, and albeit kind of boring and reflective day, I fell in love with a place I’ve never been. She graciously let me share her experience as my own as I blasted these pics for everyone to see. I couldn’t decide which picture to choose but these four are my favorites. 

And maybe that’s all life is. Maybe empathy is not always some grand heroic act. Maybe sometimes it is just pausing long enough to ask: what did the rain feel like where you were standing?